Time’s Eunuch

Posted September 16, 2017 10:40 pm by Christopher Akers

The notice of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s death in the Register of the English Province states “he had a most subtle mind, which too quickly wore out the fragile strength of his body.” The Catholic convert, Jesuit priest, and profound poet died of typhoid fever at only forty-four, after a long period of overwork and depression in Ireland.
Slight of frame, melancholic, and with a nervous constitution, Hopkins led a short yet extraordinary life. The images we have of him show a man looking at life from the outside; serene yet nervous, aloof yet tortured. Alongside his poetry, letters, journals, and sermons